Star Trek and History by Nancy Reagin

I just couldn’t do it. I wanted to like this book, and I can’t. On nearly every conceivable level as a geek, this book is offensive to me.

I’ve read the author’s Star Wars and History, done in conjunction with Lucasfilm. It drew connections that aren’t blatantly obvious and some that are downright esoteric (such as Leia’s original “star puffs” hairstyle being drawn from photos of the Mexican Revolution). The result was an extremely satisfying read that appealed to both the fanboy and the history geek in me.

This book is the exact polar opposite, made worse by the fact that the audio version’s narrator is just plain bad.

Anyone who has ever seen any episode or film from any of the Star Trek series can readily identify the historical parallels because the very nature of Trek is that it draws from the culture of the time it was done and confronts social issues. That’s a large part of what made it popular in the first place. The thing is, this book is presented in such a way that if you don’t know the episodes by title, the short synopsis of the episode is given as nearly the complete case of the author. More time is spent on a synopsis than on drawing the parallels of history or pop culture that inspired it in the first place. Granted, with the Original Series, it’s just not that difficult, and themes are repeated, but still… I expected some kind of depth. Any at all would do. As a result, this book is a dumbed down beating, made worse, as I said, by the narrator.

The narrator not only reads mechanically and sounds like her tongue is too big for her mouth, she breaks the #1 rule in my book: she can’t even pronounce the name of the series. It’s Star TREK, not Star TRACK. I’ve spent the first 40 years of my life giving non-geeks serious grief about this when they tried to use this show to tease me, back in the days when geekdom wasn’t cool. Now that it IS accepted culture, it needs to be recognized that Trek has, is, and ever will be a cornerstone of that culture. Saying TRACK is not only wrong, it just comes across as stupid. I truly don’t like saying it that way, but there it is. It’s like I can feel the intelligence of the series being sucked right out of it… sort of like the Abrams reboot version.